A Murder Mystery from fort da; Journal of the Northern California Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology, 2003 (9) 52-58.

Bernard Apfelbaum, Ph.D.

Imagine that a murder has been committed and, although it obviously was an inside job, no one knows the butler did it. Conventional crime investigation proves futile. The members of the household, thinking that the case might require analysis on a deeper level, consulted twelve therapists.

The first, an analyst, took a careful history from everyone and, after many hours, discovered homicidal impulses in all of them. “Either you all did it, or any one of you could have done it,” he declared with an air of finality. They felt they got a lot out of this solution, but thought it lacked specificity. To narrow the field, they called a behavior therapist.

Rather than spend hours gathering historical material as the analyst had done, the behavior therapist saw no need to delve into the motives of each of the members of the household. Yet she came to much the same conclusion, although for a different reason. She said she saw no purpose in attributing special significance to who in particular did the deed.

“Why be so specific?” she asked, and, although that was their reason for being there, they found themselves momentarily at a loss for words. She informed them that what needs to be analyzed is the act itself, not the people who might or might not have done it, asserting that calling it “murder” implied a murderer, which made unnecessary assumptions about motivational states. They were to avoid making such assumptions and, in particular, were to avoid assuming that there had been a murderer.

The analyst had said that they all did it or might have done it, and now the behavior therapist told them that it was not necessary to find out who did it. So they considered the possibility that they had the wrong presenting complaint. But they couldn’t escape the feeling that it seemed like murder and that they should discover who committed it. How could they get themselves to think differently?

This now seemed like a case for cognitive restructuring. For that kind of help they consulted a cognitive behavior therapist. They told him that they felt bad about still wanting to solve this “crime.” They used air quotes to show that they were not making any unnecessary assumptions. This approach seemed to work. The therapist simply asked them what they were telling themselves about it.

“We're just telling ourselves we should find the murderer,” they said.

“But suppose you don't?” he asked. “What is the worst that could happen?”

 ”Well,” they responded, “we would feel bad. We already told you that.”

“Yes, but what would you be telling yourselves that made you feel it was up to you to solve the crime?”

“We'd feel we let the victim down,” they said. “How would you feel if it were you?”

“That's the idea,” replied the therapist. “Now, do you feel bad all the time or just part of the time? And on a scale of zero to 100 percent, do you feel 100 percent bad? If not, where would you place yourselves on that scale?”

They rated feeling-bad-about-letting-the-victim-down at 80 percent. The therapist then argued that this attribution was too global, that there might well be a variety of things the people in the household could feel good about. This reasoning impressed them. They had to admit that there still were things they felt good about. So on their subsequent rating of feeling-bad-about-letting-the-victim-down, they brought it down to 35 percent.

Although everyone felt 65 percent better, they wanted to feel 90-to-100 percent better. It seemed as if the way to do that would be to go deeper, as in getting at the deeper roots, which they thought another psychoanalyst might be able to accomplish. Perhaps the previous analyst they had consulted had not been strict enough. So they got a referral to someone they heard was tough, in the classical sense. After they presented this second analyst with the details of the crime, they asked him whom he thought committed it.

“Why do you ask?” he replied.

Although taken aback at first, they thought he might be right. Maybe they did have to accept the idea that who actually did it was not the real issue. They thanked him and left the session thinking that they did indeed now have food for thought.

The group felt that even though this experience had been, on the whole, worthwhile, it was still a little incomplete. So they thought that it might now help to see a more lenient, rather than a stricter, analyst. Living in the San Francisco Bay Area, it seemed appropriate to consult a Control-Mastery analyst, especially since they heard that this approach had been confirmed by research.

This analyst listened to them at length, seemingly impervious to their more and more insistent demands that he help them solve the murder. Finally, he said that their belief that they were responsible for solving the murder was generated by survivor guilt, that it was a pathogenic belief that prevented them from getting on with their lives. In response, they stopped worrying about the murder, felt relieved and cheerful, thanked the therapist, and left.

But then they had a bit of a relapse, thinking that maybe this analyst had been too lenient. So they decided to stop getting on with their lives and get back to the murder mystery. A friend said that she was seeing a cutting-edge relational analyst and that he was neither too strict nor too lenient, but was just a fellow sufferer, kind of like a Unitarian.

He proved to be very engaging. Listening to their story with furrowed brow, he finally cleared his throat and commented that since they were complaining about something entirely outside themselves, it left him feeling distant and somewhat futile. They felt concerned, thinking that they should apologize, but their friend (the person who referred them to him) told them not to worry, that he says these kinds of things to people all the time. Nevertheless, they hastened to reassure him that they appreciated his candor, saying that he did indeed give them something to work on and that they would return if and when they needed to.

At this point they thought it might be useful to take their search to another level by consulting a Jungian analyst. She was very receptive to their story. When they had finished, she said, “What you are really looking for is within you. You are searching for wholeness.”

At this, the group members shifted uneasily in their chairs, looking at one another and at the analyst for some way to respond to this. One finally broke the silence: “Look, don’t you think that’s asking a lot of us? We’ve had about as much help as we can take at this point.”

She nodded sympathetically and replied, “Look at it this way. The murder is what brought you here. Maybe you needed that. Yours is a very familiar story. You are searching for the Grail.” This immediately satisfied half the group. They felt elevated, inspired to pursue their mission. But the other half of the group felt just the opposite, interpreting this to mean that they were on a wild goose chase.

Given this internal dissension, they decided to consult a family therapist, only to discover that there were two kinds—classical and neoclassical—or, to use current terminology, modern and postmodern. To be on the safe side, they decided to try both.

By now they were not surprised that the first family therapist, an MRI-Haley-Jackson-Bateson person, seemed uninterested in the details of the crime. Instead, she encouraged the group members to each present their views and then to discuss the event. She listened to what they said and then gave her conclusion: the victim was the identified patient, whose symptom—dying—served the purpose of bringing the household together in their grief. He had gotten himself murdered as a way to maintain household homeostasis.

They all marveled at this extraordinary explanation and agreed that none of them would ever have thought of it. But the more they considered it, the more confused they got. One said he wasn’t sure he wanted homeostasis or even believed in it. Another chided the first, saying that he was looking a gift corpse in the mouth. The others made a face and asked the therapist to overlook this obvious resistance. She explained to them that there was no such thing as resistance any more, and they felt vaguely reassured.

In any case, this begged the question of who actually did the deed. Even if the victim had asked for it, the question once again arose: was it murder? So, when they visited the postmodern family therapist, a social constructivist, they asked him, “Was this murder or wasn't it?”

He said, “That is exactly your problem. You are looking for a modern solution in a postmodern world. Objective reality is a modern, that is, old-fashioned concept. Whether or not this was a murder is a matter of narrative truth. All you ever have is a story and it depends on who is telling it.”

He went on to say that what was at the heart of a problem were the words you used to describe it. Calling it murder invoked one set of meanings and feelings, but calling it something else would invoke quite different meanings and feelings.

He then asked them if they could be more specific about what they meant by “murder.” As they struggled to cope with this question, he said that he noticed that their concept of “murder” implies a murderer, and asked, “Do you really want to stay with that particular story line?” They said they had not realized that their problem was their belief in objective reality. But they had no idea what other words to use, or what another story would be. He said, “Let's think about it together.”

They then brightened, and said, “Oh, yes, there was another story.” Remembering the formulation the other family therapist had given them, they said that another story could be that the victim had died in order to maintain their family homeostasis. He responded that that story was obviously modern and cybernetic and that they must have gotten that from an expert because no one could think of such a story on their own. He explained that the concept of an expert was obsolete and that they had to think of their own alternative story.

He then asked them a series of questions, eliciting from them certain descriptions, like that the victim was no longer present and, in addition, not likely to return. He then asked them to consider this possible story: that having gone away and not being likely to return suggested that the victim could be thought of as having gone on a long journey. “How does that story seem to fit?” he asked.

They all immediately thought that this story sounded pretty good, and it settled their minds somewhat. But weren’t they supposed to be the ones on a journey—to find the Grail or whatever? They had been warned not to talk to more than one therapist because it could be confusing, and now they could see the wisdom in that. But for the moment they liked the idea that whatever story they were comfortable with was the right one, at least for them. They decided that they would think that way about the event from then on.

But still not quite satisfied, although they felt this work had been in many ways useful, the members of the household phoned a Gestalt therapist for an appointment. They told her, “A person from our household went on a long journey and we want to find out who did it.” There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line, and then, “You said … what?”

“That one of the members of our household went on a long journey and we want to find out who did it.”

“Look, stop gaming me, okay? Let's get serious or you’re wasting my time and yours,” she said evenly.

They were about to ask her if she had heard the latest about objective reality and narrative truth, but then thought better of it, and instead said, “Well, actually, you could call it a murder, so to speak, and we want to find out who did it.”

“Well then, now we're in business,” she responded briskly.

It looked like they would finally discover the murderer. Like some of the previous therapists, the Gestalt therapist said she saw no need to interrogate anyone or to investigate the act itself. Not only that, she declared that she could give them the solution while they were still on the phone, terminating before the first appointment—a triumph of managed care.

She proposed that the solution to the crime was self-evident: “The murder had to be committed by the victim himself,” she argued, adding that since everyone gets what they want, all murders are in fact suicide. “Why would this person have been murdered if he had not wanted to be? What was he getting out of it?”

So that was it, or was it? They had to grant that whatever happens to you must be what you want, especially if what you want is for things to happen to you accidentally.

When they told their friends that they now knew who the murderer was, that it was the victim himself, their friends said they had been trying to be patient all along, but this was the last straw. Going on, as friends do, they told them to get over it, to quit hanging on to it, that the past is past and it’s time to put it behind them, what's done is done, that none of this is going to bring the victim back to life, and that it's time to move on with their lives.

Finding themselves at a loss, since there is no answer to the friend approach, they briefly considered taking up a hobby, but who has the time? One of them shared that he read somewhere that if someone commits an offence and you let it bother you, then that’s double jeopardy. Thanks a lot for sharing, they said.

One suddenly had the inspiration that maybe the butler did it, but the others said that was pretty trite, that she must have read too many mysteries.

It then occurred to them that perhaps all the people they had consulted were too doctrinaire and that maybe what they needed was an eclectic therapist. As it happened there was one in the neighborhood.

Just as they had hoped, he informed them that: “I don't use a theory. I just do whatever helps.” They found this relieving and even a little flattering, so they told him about the murder. He also asked what their previous experience with therapy had been, and they told him that as well. Then he gave them his assessment. “You are just shopping around,” he said, with some asperity it seemed to them. “Settle on one therapist and make a commitment or you will never work this through.”

They thought it might be rude to ask him how he had decided this, or what the limit was on the number of therapists you could see before you were diagnosed as “shopping around.” But they had already seen eleven and that now sounded like too many. Also, “shopping around” did sound bad. He then added, a little more severely this time, “No one can solve this for you. You have to do it for yourselves.”

They could see what he meant, that there were people who could better justify taking up his time. They only momentarily considered asking him whether doing it for themselves meant doing it on their own, or whether it was okay to get further help. But they said nothing, since he had made it clear that he was only there to help them, and that he was doing them the favor of being willing to not use theories and of speaking plainly. Clearly, he was not one to be trifled with.

So, a bit deflated, they decided to stop there because they had heard that you have to stop somewhere since therapy can go on forever. They decided that a good way to finish things off would be to see a group facilitator. They had some trouble finding one. He said he didn’t get much call for his services nowadays, that like primal screaming, it was kind of a been there/done that sort of thing.

He had them form a circle and hold hands. Then he led them around the house on a blind trust-walk. After that everyone felt much better.